


Coming Home to You

by PomegranatePomsom



Category: Dead by Daylight (Video Game), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Movies)
Genre: Cannibalism, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Homecoming, Multi, Not Beta Read, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV First Person, The opposite of a slow burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-11
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2019-11-15 18:19:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18078596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PomegranatePomsom/pseuds/PomegranatePomsom
Summary: The story starts out like any other: Man meets cannibal. Man and cannibal fall in love. But then the man and the cannibal escape the nightmarish murder-realm they're trapped in. Man, desperate to find the person he loves, travels to the cannibal's home. And what he thinks should be the end of his journey is only just the beginning.





	1. Bubba

**Author's Note:**

> This is for Ace, who's been my hype-man throughout this whole writing process.
> 
> ALSO, the whole survivors-reviving-in-water bit was yoinked from Anxiouspeaches. Go read The Spider's Hook if you like fucked-up shit.
> 
> Rating is M for now, but depending on what I decide to include, it might go up or down. Who knows!
> 
> Enjoy! <3

When I was a kid, depressed and failing all of my high school classes, my mother pulled me aside. Now, she’s always had a really bad temper, so when she got ahold of my report card I swore she was going to beat me within an inch of my life. But she didn’t-- instead, she looked at me in that sad way moms do when they’re tired and trying not to cry, and she said to me, “Honey, things are hard for you right now. You might not be able to believe it, but someday something’s gonna happen and it’s gonna make you care. You’re gonna find someone or something that’s gonna make you wanna work your ass off and actually give a shit.” After that, she tacked on something else about being there for me if I needed her, but I don’t really remember the specifics.

 

Like all depressed, failing kids I didn’t believe there was anything that could pull me out of that funk. And I got better, sure-- I survived high school, I moved out of my Mom’s house, I got an okay job-- but I never really found that thing my mother was talking about. There’s been little sparks, like that time I wanted to open up a bar! Only to realize I knew nothing about alcohol. And didn’t have the credit for a loan. There was also that time I told myself I was gonna be a pro video game player, just to get burned out when I didn’t have an immediate talent for competitive-level play. 

 

Those are just a couple of examples, but, basically, everything I ever wanted to do with my life turned out to be a pipe dream. I had resigned myself to living the life of a boring white dude, doomed to mediocrity.

 

You might laugh, but being taken by the Entity was the best thing to ever happen to me.

 

I’m serious! I was suffocating back home, stuck in a loop of boredom and unhappiness. (Not to mention sub-par pay.) In the Entity’s realm at least the loop I was stuck in was exciting! Whenever I felt like things got too quiet? BAM! Trial! Every time. You can’t even think about being bored when you’re being hunted by the Bad-Guy-of-the-Week!

 

Even when you thought you had the routine of the trials down, you’d get surprises! Sometimes the bad guys had new toys, new ways to find you-- and sometimes the surprises came from your own allies. 

 

Once, when it was just the four of us, Meg had said some insensitive shit about Jake’s mom, or whatever; Jake, who was somehow as smart as a box of rocks despite going to like, Yale, brought that into the trial with him! He actually avoided helping Meg off of her hook because of his petty little grudge. Now me, I wouldn’t say I’m a genius or anything, but even I knew when to put that stuff aside.

 

Another good thing about the realm? I got a chance to actually prove myself-- stand up and stand out. 

 

Somehow we survived that trial. (Well, not “somehow”. It was 99% thanks to Claudette and 1% thanks to Doorbells making himself Goddamn deaf.) Then I pulled all of us together and I put my conflict resolution training to work. None of them had ever had an office job-- where that kind of training is necessary because people are so bored they pick fights for fun-- so they ate it up! Even if it was only for a couple of minutes, they thought I was insightful! Maybe even smart!

 

From then on, whenever they needed a kink ironed out or a helping hand, they actually asked me! I usually bullshitted most of my advice, but to be wanted-- to be  _ needed _ was so new and exhilarating. I wanted to be needed all the time! Looking back on it, maybe that was stupid, but it made me grow into that official-unofficial “leader” role. That helped in the long run, right? Helped my confidence, helped my introversion. Helped me meet Bubba.

 

Now, okay, that’s not  _ entirely _ accurate, because by the time he and I had time to sit and chit-chat I’d already met the guy a couple times.

 

The first time I saw him I thought we were just going up against Meltman like we had before. I’d heard the chainsaw and the hammer and I just rolled my eyes. SSDD, you know? I pushed myself up against a bigass rock-- if he came for me, I could just shimmy around it until he lost all of his  _ chainsaw chutzpah _ \-- when I heard this weird, like, giggling. High and kind of girly, but in a fake way, not in that cute way that Kate or Laurie sometimes did.

 

I was curious, so I moved away from the rock and tried to find out where the sound was coming from. I was being really stupid but honestly, I almost felt compelled to follow it, as weird as that sounds. I think I knew it was trouble, but I also think I didn’t care.

 

You can only imagine my surprise when I traced it and found it wasn’t from Meltman, but this absolute mountain of a man. I was pretty stunned, until I saw that he had David on the ground. I cursed at the big bastard, then I picked up a rock and hurled it at him. He shrieked and turned at me, basically forgetting David even existed.

 

Now, when I was in tenth grade I had this crush on a girl. Trying to impress her, I snuck us both into an R-rated movie. I don’t really remember what happened in it, since I was busy staring at her and sighing wistfully, but there is one thing I do recall: There was a big action scene in the climax of the movie where the hero, Tom Thundermuscles, was surrounded on all sides by henchmen. Just as it looked like they were about to finish him off, you hear this revving chainsaw. The camera pans and the Love Interest (did she have a name?) was standing on top of a cliff, screaming, a chainsaw as long as she was tall in her hands. There was this really raw, animalistic power to the way she held it and the way she moved and when I saw it my first thought was “Kickass Action Woman”.

 

(I think this movie kind of changed me as a person. I definitely remember renting it from the store when it came out on DVD and watching it a shitload of times. Mostly to masturbate to that scene but you know how it goes.)

 

As fucking  _ stupid _ as it sounds, when I saw Bubba, with his chainsaw and his muscles and his fury, all I could think was “Kickass Action Woman”. I was stricken with awe-- then, shortly afterwards, stricken with a hammer. About two dozen times. 

 

(He told me later that he also ate some of me before the Entity took my body away, so that’s pretty romantic, I guess.)

 

I was weirdly shocked to find out everyone else had been creeped out by him. Sometimes, when we weren’t too shaken up after a trial, the gang liked to talk about what had happened during the last one-- talk strategy, try and plan at least a little. I’d watched David shiver when I brought up our new friend.

 

“Didn’t sit right with me,” he’d said with a shake of his head. “I mean, every other bloke coming at us is freaky in his own right, but that bastard…”

 

He waved his hand in front of his face. “It’s that mask. It’s skin, I think. That’s what does it.”

 

Nea nodded in agreement. She made some comment about how cow leather doesn’t tan that color, but I was honestly just paying attention to her inflection and feeling a little bit of pride at how much better her English had gotten. 

 

“He’s not too different from the mountain people I’ve met,” Jake added, still determined to act aloof and cool, as if we all didn’t know that he cried any time a dog died in a movie. “To those people, every living thing is either hunter or game. And if they don’t hunt you,  _ they’ll _ become the game.” 

 

(Thanks, Mr. Kipling. Very insightful.)

 

I held my tongue. God help me, the earful I would get if I told them I thought he was kind of cool. 

 

\--

 

The first time I  _ met _ -met Bubba it was completely by accident. Jake had disappeared into the forest for the nth time and for the nth time we did rock-paper-scissors to see who’d run after him. I lost-- _ because of course I did _ \-- and, shoving my hands into my pockets, trekked out with Meg in tow. 

 

We walked out of sight of camp and started shouting for him. Jake! Jake! Where are you, you son of a bitch? Why do you run off like no one's here to worry about you? Jakeypoo! Jake! 

 

Admittedly we half-assed our attempts. The guy always came back home anyway, and even though he was usually a little banged up he seemed fine! There wasn’t any real reason to go after him every time. We could have been using our down time in better ways, like clipping our nails or letting Kate teach us how to hit the “ _ Oh! Oh! Oh! _ ”s in “Man! I feel like a Woman!”.

 

When we’d wasted enough time to pretend like we’d put in effort we turned to head back. But just then, Meg jumped suddenly.

 

“I saw someone move!” she shouted, pointing to...well, some trees. That’s all there was in this stupid forest: trees! 

 

“Was it Jake?” I asked.

 

“Not sure,” she replied. “Let’s go.”

 

Without even waiting for me to agree, she sprinted off. I ran after her but, c’mon, let’s be honest with ourselves, there’s no way a doughy nerd is gonna catch up to someone who runs for  _ fun _ .

 

(Now I don’t wanna judge Meg here, because it’d be a real pot-meets-kettle type of scenario, but I think she was hoping it was the bear trap guy. The last time we’d met him in a trial she’d accidentally called him “Dad” and I think she was hoping for-- I dunno, closure? Revenge? A chance to explain herself? I don’t think the guy would give a shit no matter what but it was good for her to pursue a goal, I guess.)

 

Regardless, I lost her. She was gone and I was lost as shit. There was also a fog rising, which was never good. I groaned and turned back, doing my best to run through the stitch in my side. I managed for a solid minute before the cramping was too awful and I was balls-deep in fog. I sighed and I walked.

 

It wasn’t like the fog we go through to get into or out of a trial-- this stuff was thick; it almost seemed like it was sticking onto me. And it stunk! Was the fog supposed to smell, especially like roadkill? After a hot minute I got sick of it and waved my hands through the air, hoping it’d just clear up.

 

Surprisingly, it did. I was back in the forest. I wasn’t in the same spot, though-- I was at the entrance to a clearing. It was wide open and mostly barren, save for a single tree dead in the center. 

 

I'd never seen anything like it before. Even the Sanctuary Wood was different from this! But I didn't have time to marvel at this new discovery before I felt that strange, all-too-familiar heartbeat. Maybe it had been the bear trap guy (who was  _ not _ deserving of a fun nickname) after all?

 

Apparently I had as much common sense as I'd had book smarts, because rather than turning tail and booking it back to camp, I went in closer to the tree, right to the source of the beating.

 

I got closer and I heard this  _ sobbing _ \-- just really sad, a little pathetic. I thought maybe it'd been Nurse Dirtypillow, since it was pretty high-pitched and she had a tendency to sob when she ripped out your throat. But no, it wasn't her at all.

 

It was my Kickass Action Woman. I peeked around the tree and spotted him, knelt on the ground, face in his hands. 

 

Before he noticed me I gave him and the area around us a quick looksie, very happy to find that his hammer--and thank fuck, his chainsaw-- were nowhere in sight. I breathed a sigh of relief and he shouted, startled.

 

We both jumped back, putting our hands up. I felt so bad for scaring him; he looked petrified, like  _ I _ was the threat here.

 

His lips quivered, and to my  _ endless surprise _ , he spoke to me.

 

“ _ Go away _ …” he said. His voice was tiny and his speech was pretty heavily slurred, but I understood him well enough.

 

“Hey man, I'm not here to hurt you. I'm sorry for startling you.” I took a step forward and he yelped.

 

“ _ Go away! _ ” He repeated, louder, more panicked. He raised his fists, but I wasn't really scared of hands that hairy or that chubby. Like the rest of him, his hands were just kind of cute. Still, I didn't want to set him off; I backed up.

 

“I'm going, okay?” I tried to reassure him by cranking the “Soft and Supportive Leader” voice up to eleven, but he was mostly unfazed. It wasn't until I put real distance between us that he relaxed at all. His massive shoulders sagged and his strong knees buckled. 

 

Christ on a cracker how could a big dude like that be scared of a nerd like me? I remember kind of laughing at the ridiculousness of that. Granted that was a dick move, but things were different then-- all I knew about this guy was that he liked shoving chainsaws up people's asses, so my empathy was pretty limited.

 

I guess he didn't like being laughed at. Turns out that hairy, chubby fists still hit pretty hard.

 

I fell on my ass and he was on me in a second, hands around my throat. He choked me, slamming my head into the grass. 

 

(Honestly, more than the actual pain, the dull thump of my head hitting the ground is what I hated.)

 

I struggled, wriggled, tried to ask him to stop, but it was useless-- Kickass Action Woman really had it out for me!

 

I quickly tried to remember what David taught me about fighting, but most of it was buried under information about Keurig settings and Spider-man trivia.

 

What I  _ could _ remember was pretty basic-- stuff like “don't tuck your thumbs under your fingers when you punch”. I think he thought I'd never been in a fight before, but little did he know I'd been in several! Yeah, I hadn't won any of them, but did that matter? No.

 

Inadequate training aside, I was still a man and I still knew how to throw a punch! Thumb untucked, I decked the big guy across his stupid leather face. I don't think it hurt him, but it startled him enough that his grip loosened on my throat.

 

Along with the fresh air, I had an idea come to mind. I quickly jabbed my thumbs into the big guy's soft sides, just below his ribs. I pushed and pushed until I thought my thumbs would snap off, but eventually he yelped and fell off of me. He rubbed his sore sides and glared up at me as I got to my feet.

 

“Hey dude, don't give me that look! You attacked me first! I was just defending myself.” 

 

“ _ Shouldn'ta laughed at me… _ ” he replied.

 

“Well, you shouldn’t attack people with chainsaws and sacrifice them to Cthulu monsters either, but that doesn’t stop you, does it?”

 

He stared at me, eyes narrow and overbite out. I don’t think he understood my subtle Lovecraftian allusion, which was whatever. He stood and brushed off his knees.

 

I thrusted my thumb over my shoulder, more than a little annoyed by this point. “I’m leaving.” I told him. “You better not follow me.”

 

Without waiting I turned on my heels and got the hell out of there. 

 

\--

 

That was our first meeting. Yeah, yeah, I know-- very romantic. But Rome wasn’t built in a day, and homicidal Texans aren’t seduced in an hour.

 

As I was leaving I glanced back a couple of times to make sure he hadn’t followed. Thankfully, he had enough sense not to-- I would have felt bad if I’d had to work my moves on him again. I was definitely more scared for him than of him, that was for sure. That was why I’d broken out into a sprint as soon as I was out of sight-- for his safety, not because I was afraid or anything. He was a 300-something pound cannibal with a mean streak but I knew I could have taken him. If I wanted to, I mean. Which I didn’t. Because I’m nice. And a total pacifist. 

 

Still, he stayed on my mind for the rest of the night. While I was initially pretty annoyed, I started to feel really bad for being such a dick to him. He'd been minding his own business, just hanging out, and I'd come along and disturbed him. I couldn't imagine that hanging around all those other freaks was especially fun or tranquil, so that spot might have been the only place the big guy could catch a break.

 

I slept on it, and by the time I got up, I knew I wanted to apologize. So, like Jake was fond of doing, I snuck off.

 

I wandered around for a bit, not really sure what to search for. Everything in the forest looked the same-- there weren't any special landmarks or paths to break up the scenery. It wasn't like the hiking trail back home, which had a huge dick-shaped rock pointed north and an almost perfectly round lake a mile south of the entrance. Here it was all the same trees in the same patterns in the same shapes. It was like I was in a video game and the developer got really lazy with their asset placement.

 

Despite what I thought was a lack of progress, the putrid fog eventually rose again. I welcomed it this time, strode right into it. I didn't even need to clear it away this time-- as soon as I wondered if I was close to the spot, it lifted.

 

Lo and behold, there I was.

 

I wasn't even sure if he was here this time. Rather than creep around and risk scaring him again though, I pursed my lips and whistled out a couple notes. From the other side of the tree I saw someone stir, and when a huge mass emerged cautiously from behind it, I knew it was him.

 

I waved. “Uhh, hey buddy.”

 

He hid at the sight of me, peeking out just enough to glare. Yeah I deserved that.

 

“How's it going today?” I asked, not expecting too much. I wrung my hands and tried to smile at him-- the old customer-placating habits came to a head. He continued to eye me suspiciously. (While that didn't help me, it proved he at least had more tenacity than most coupon-cutters.)

 

“Right, right, uhh-- You mind if we talk, buddy? I wanna--” I took a few steps forward, but quickly froze when he shifted his body and I caught sight of the sledgehammer clutched in his fist. Even from twenty fucking paces I could see the bulging veins in his hand. 

 

I gulped. I pushed my luck and got closer-- nothing. Closer still; nothing. I pushed and pushed my luck until I was about ten feet away, and still he didn't move or threaten me. If Ace had been there he might have stolen us both away to Vegas somehow, because clearly I was the luckiest son of a bitch on the planet.

 

“Whoa, buddy.” I made my voice as high and soft as I could. I kept my eyes locked on the hammer. “You wanna maybe put that away? Hmm?”

 

He looked down from me to the hammer. He raised it, bouncing it in and out of his hand. He put a little spin into it, maybe to show off how handy he was with it, or maybe just to amuse himself. I was pretty entranced by it, but maybe that was because I was worried about it being lodged in my brain again. 

 

“I wanted to say I'm sorry.” At some point that slipped out of me and he froze. The hammer passed through his fingers and fell, landing right on his foot. He yelped, slipped and fell, knocking his head against the tree as he went down. 

 

I got down beside him and clutched his wrist, pulling his hand away from his head. He moaned, low and sad, looking and sounding like he was about to cry. 

 

I put a hand on his back and leaned him forward slightly, trying to get a look at his head. “Let me see, man. Let me…”

 

He turned his head away from me, giving me access to the spot he'd hit, but it was impossible to see if he was actually hurt with the mask still on. I put my fingers in his hair to try and pull it off when a wave of common sense nearly knocked me on my ass.

 

“Can I take the mask off?” I asked it as gently and calmly as I could but he still protested, shaking his head and blubbering. He gripped the edges of it like it was his lifeline.

 

I rubbed his arm, which I remember being scary tense. “I can't look at your head if it's on, man. The only way to know if you got hurt is to examine your actual head.”

 

“ _ No! _ ” He shouted as he turned back to me, hiding the spot from view. “ _ It's fine! ‘M fine! _ ” 

 

I wanted to protest, but decided against it. He seemed okay enough, and pushing the issue probably wouldn’t do anything but make him more upset. No sense on getting on a killer’s bad side if I didn’t have to.

 

So I sat down next to him with a sigh. “All right, well, how about your foot?” I held my leg out and lifted it just slightly, hoping he might copy me. He did. I pointed my foot towards my body, then rolled the ankle and glanced at him when he did the same.

 

“Does it hurt?”

 

“ _ Nuh-uh _ .”

 

“What about when you wiggle your toes?”

 

He paused for a moment, assumedly to try it. Then he shook his head. “ _ No. _ ”

 

“Well that’s good-- it means you didn’t break anything or bruise it too badly.”

 

He nodded at me. We both went quiet. Like, the kind of quiet a person is after they jam their hand in a car door and they’re trying really hard not to scream. Kind of awkward, but mostly painful.

 

It was then I really noticed how close we were together; I was pressed right against his side, our arms touching, my hand on his. Oh shit oh  _ Jesus-- _

 

I pulled my hand away and thrusted it out instead, offering. “My, uhh, my name’s Dwight, by the way.”

 

He stared at my hand for a minute, but slowly he took it. His grip was bone-breaking and his handshake nearly dislodged my arm, but he was probably just being overenthusiastic. “ _ Bubba _ ,” he told me. “ _ But Mama called me Junior _ .”

 

“Is your dad’s name Bubba too?”

 

“ _ Never met him. _ ”

 

“Oh, uhh…” I knitted my brows at him. “Sorry. I, umm, didn’t really know my dad either, so I guess we’re in the same boat.”

 

He shrugged at me. Not a big deal? I guess not. Absent dads were as American as apple pie, after all. They’re basically a tradition.

 

“I-- I like your bracelet,” I said quickly, pointing to my wrist. I wasn’t in the mood for even more awkward silence. 

 

He held it up for me. Oh… oh it was bones. And teeth. Probably people bones and teeth. Good, good. Great.

 

He swished his wrist, letting the little bell on the bracelet jingle. He told me his brother-- Nubby, Nuthin’, Nubbins? Something in that general trailer ball park-- had made it for him and that they had a matching pair. He proceeded to gush about his brother, telling me that he was an  _ artiste _ , and he was so smart and hard-working. He told me he liked to make furniture out of bones and leather and all the extra chicken feathers from the slaughterhouse. He said he taught him how to be a  _ man _ .

 

He started to rattle off about how his big brother was gonna be a famous artist as soon as he saved up the money to get out of Texas, and he was gonna put his sculptures up in one of those modern art museums. (Probably the kind that display golden toilets and where the janitors mistake the art for trash cans and put garbage bags in them.) He was getting really excited, rattling off all the places his brother wanted to go-- and then, in the middle of his sentence, he just stopped and stared at me.

 

“...What?” I murmured to him. I was worried I’d offended him somehow, even though I’d been attentive. Well, as attentive as any guy could be when he’d gone however many months without his Strattera. 

 

Before I could even blink he crushed himself against me, pinning me against the tree with his weight. I was about to kick him off when he let out this  _ awful _ wail, like a dying animal. 

 

“What’s wrong?” I put my arms around him. “Are you hurt? What happened?”

 

He wailed again,  _ right _ in my ear. “ _ He’s gone! He’s gone! It was a truck! I watched it hit him! He’s dead! He can’t never go to Paris! He’s gone! _ ”

 

My breath caught in my throat. Not sure what else to do, I rubbed his back and tried to dig down deep into the sensitivity training I’d been given after I made some offhand comment about a coworker’s weight. Empathy, empathy, empathy. Put yourself in his shoes. How would you feel if your brother-- who was very likely a weird murder-cannibal too-- got smushed under a big wheeler right in front of you? 

 

I tried to picture the scene, play it in my brain. The image that popped up in my head was a weirdly vivid scene of a Texas highway in the twilight. In the scene I was shambling towards this like, long red streak in the road. I heard crying and I felt like my leg hurt, but I didn’t care. I just knelt down by the long red streak-- the roadkill that used to be my brother-- and I sobbed. In my brain I reached out and fumbled with his corpse, trying to shake him lightly and getting even more upset when odd chunks of him fell off.

 

It was gross as fuck. For a minute I swore I could smell the corpse baking in the heat and it nearly made me gag.

 

Empathy time was over. My imagination got the best of me again.

 

“I’m sorry,” I whispered to him. “Seems like you loved him a lot. It’s, uhh, it’s really tough when a loved one passes, especially when it happens violently.”

 

I cringed at myself. That had sounded fake as fuck, even though I had tried to be genuine. Luckily for me, he didn’t seem to mind. He simply nodded.

 

With a sniffle, he sat back on his legs, his fists balled up tight on his lap. He was quiet now-- I think he just needed to get a good scream out of his system-- but he still looked really… I dunno, dejected? That sounds poetic enough so we’ll go with that. 

 

Something about the way he looked made my chest hurt. Not so much in a heart attack way, but in the way you hurt when you’re at the pet store buying food for your dog and they have other dogs there up for adoption. You want to adopt another one because they’re so sweet and you already love them but you know you can’t afford it and if you brought home  _ another _ pet your landlord would kill you. So you grit your teeth and bite back the tears and leave. It was that kinda thing.

 

I was hit with this overwhelming urge to take care of him. I wanted to bring him home and give him a bath, dress him up all cozy and then just plop in front of the TV with him and binge something harmless and trashy. Maybe he’d like  _ The Young and the Restless _ ?

 

I put my hands on his face without even thinking, stroking my thumbs across his cheeks. Our eyes met for a moment, but then he looked away. He smiled just a little. It felt like a suckerpunch to the gut.

 

We stayed like that for a while, unmoving, quiet except for our breathing. Eventually though my arms got tired; as I moved them away, he raised his, grabbing both of them just above the elbows. Maybe he didn’t want me to stop?

 

“It’s uhh, getting late.” I muttered. Was it? Trying to think about how time passed in that place always made my brain hurt. “We should go before everyone starts worrying about us. Are you gonna be okay?”

 

His hands slid down my arms. He frowned but he didn’t protest. “ _ I’ll be okay _ .”

 

“Good, good. Great.” I stood and helped him to his feet. Before I could even think to leave, though, he pulled me in for a bear hug, squeezing the wind outta me.

 

“ _ Will you come back? _ ” he asked.

 

“Yeah!” I managed.

 

“Promise?”

 

“I Promise!  _ PleaseletmegoIcan’tbreathe _ .”

 

He released me from his death grip and I headed out towards the woods. Before I could cross through the treeline I heard him call, “ _ Bye! _ ”

 

I looked back and he was bouncing on the balls of his feet, waving.

 

I waved back. “Bye!”

 

“ _ Bye! _ ” He giggled.

 

“Bye.”

 

I turned away again and kept moving.

 

“ _ Bye! _ ” He called again when I’d entered the fog. I couldn’t see him when I looked.

 

“Bye!” I shouted back.

 

“ _ See you soon! _ ” 

 

“See you soon!”

 

I heard him laugh again, sweet and high. 

 

\--

 

I saw him again way sooner than I thought.

 

I was in a trial, working on a generator, as ya do. Suddenly, David, who was working with me quietly, shouted for me to get my ass out of there. Not being too good at focusing on two things at once, I didn’t even register what he said until it was too late. He yanked me out of the way, and just as I hit the ground I heard this dull, wet  _ thunk _ .

 

I knew he’d been hit. I should have felt bad about it, but honestly I didn’t. David got hit by killers  _ a lot _ . It was mostly to protect us-- which I appreciated, of course-- but sometimes he went out of his way to get hit, especially when we were going up against women. I think he was a masochist or something.

 

(Look, all I’m saying is that I wouldn’t be surprised if you found a couple of trashy femdom magazines underneath his mattress.)

 

David dashed away, no doubt trying to drag whatever son-of-a-bitch we were up against this time away from me. It didn’t really work, considering that when I looked up, Bubba was looming over me and wiping off his hammer.

 

I should have run-- like, I  _ really _ should have. Newfound friendship aside, trials were business. And business is business, capiche? But because I’m an idiot, I just stayed on the ground, smiling up at him with this goofy-ass grin on my face.

 

“Hey, buddy, hey! It’s nice seeing you here. I was worried I might have to go up against someone scary.”

 

He grabbed me by the collar, lifting me up and setting me on my feet. He pointed away, telling me to run. I didn’t-- again, stupid.

 

He lifted up the hammer, and I don’t really remember what happened after that, because apparently he hit me so hard I just blacked out. 

 

Later, when we were back at the campfire, Claudette pulled me aside and told me what happened. Bubba not only hit me hard enough to make me pass out, but also hard enough that I went into a seizing fit. He was startled, which I guess wasn’t unreasonable, since I don’t think any of us had seen something like that happen in the Entity’s realm. He must have felt bad about it or something, because he picked me up and carried me (“ _ Comme si vous étiez un petit chaton! _ ”) to the nearest person, which just so happened to be her. He laid me, still shaking, at her feet and backed away. She did the best she could with the tools she had, but ultimately, I just sort of bled out. What was she supposed to do? She wasn’t a doctor, after all, and there was no hospital.

 

After that, she told me, Bubba just left the rest of them alone. He took my body to the basement and stayed down there, not even coming up to peek or revv up his saw and scare them. She hadn’t complained, of course, but there was this eerie feeling in the air for the rest of the trial. She described it, while waving her hands in circles, as making her feel like a “sad ghost”, which was very flowery. Which suited her because, you know, the plant nerd thing.

 

I asked David and Adam about it later and they told me basically the same thing, but in more of a meatheaded and literal way, respectively. Adam especially had been worried.

 

“It felt wrong, just in general-- but it also felt wrong for us to be there. It was like we were intruding in on something.” He frowned and crossed his arms. Somehow he was even more handsome when he looked like that and it was bullshit. “And you don’t remember a thing that happened after it hit you?”

 

“He’s not an it.” I remember being too defensive about that. Adam had cocked up a brow, but didn’t press me on it. “But no, I don’t remember. I was out and then I was back at camp, same as any other time I get my ass handed to me.”

 

He nodded. “I think we should just assume the Entity counted it as a sacrifice then and let it be.”

 

“But,” David added, because he always had to add something, “When someone’s sacrificed, we all feel it. Even as we were leaving, I didn’t feel nothin’.”

 

“Well, it must have happened right after that,” I said. “I mean, I came back right after you guys did.”

 

“ _ Nooo _ you didn’t.” Adam said with a shake of his head. “It was a while before you came back. You were gone way too long. In fact, most of us were pretty worried by the time you popped your head out of the water.”

 

“But no one said anything.”

 

He shrugged. “You were safe, and I think that’s all any of us cared about.”

 

\--

 

Going to see him after that felt weird. Should I have been angry at him? Upset? I should have probably been scared, but more than anything I was just kinda disappointed.

 

It must have shown on my face, because the minute I stepped into the clearing and we could see each other clearly, he tried to hide behind the tree. I rubbed the bridge of my nose.

 

“Come on out. There’s no point in hiding, dude.”

 

He cautiously waddled up to me, arms tight against his chest. He looked like he was about to be punished, like I was his mom and I was gonna switch the hell out of him. Slowly, I reached for his hands. I wrapped my fingers around his wrists, stroking them gently. 

 

“I’m not gonna hurt you, you know that. Don’t worry.” 

 

He shook his head at me-- I guess unsure if I actually  _ would _ hurt him. So I didn’t move, didn’t say anything, just stayed put, rubbed his wrists and listened to him breathe.

 

He took his time, and I got to thinking. When I was making my way over I think, maybe, I was mad at him. I wasn’t ready to explode on him or anything, but I was  _ irked _ , like maybe I was gonna push his buttons, make him say something that would give me an excuse to go off on him. But just standing here like this, being close, watching the thoughts turn in his head… I don’t think I could have stayed angry if I tried.

 

At that moment I realized that part of being a leader is being self-reflective, knowing yourself so that you can give your comrades clear expectations, and so there’s no bad blood between you. More than abuse or scolding, Bubba needed someone who was gonna be calm and clear with him so that he could understand. Maybe that was what went wrong.

 

So as he slowly began to unwrap himself, I realized that I wasn’t angry-- just hurt. We were supposed to be cool, weren’t we? But he’d been so vicious, like we’d never even spoken to each other. I think that’s what really took the metaphorical goat piss.

 

“Bubba, we need to talk about that last trial.” I was firm. Not mean or  _ abrasive _ or anything like that; I took extra care to make sure.

 

Our fingers were locked by this point so he squeezed my hands and bit his lip.

 

I sighed. “I’d like to know why you did that-- why you killed me. I thought we were friends, and I felt really betrayed.”

 

“... _ We are friends _ .” He said after a moment. “ _ I didn’t wanna hurt you _ .”

 

“Then why did you do it? I’m not mad, I just wanna know.”

 

“ _ ‘Cuz… _ ” More lip chewing. “ _ ‘Cuzza my family _ .”

 

Well, that was a start. “What about your family?”

 

“ _ You’ll think it’s stupid if I tell you… _ ”

 

“I won’t, I promise.” He’d started to shrink in again by this point, so I tugged at him, pulling us both down into the grass. He sat down next to me, which seemed to be less awkward for him than being face-to-face.

 

“ _ My family, I gotta… _ ” His voice got even smaller. “ _ I gotta protect ‘em. From outsiders _ .”

 

“I see, I see.” I didn’t see at all. “Am I an outsider?”

 

He nodded, though he seemed reluctant to. “ _ All of you is. All you-- _ ” He paused. “ _ Survivors _ .”

 

“That a uhh… weird thing to call us, don’t you think?”

 

“ _ It’s what Uncle Evan calls you. _ ”

 

“Who’s… Who’s Uncle Evan?”

 

He explained to me that his “Uncle” was actually the bear trap guy, who’d been taking care of him since the Entity brought him here. He informed me that he had another “Uncle”, Phillip, who turned out to be Doorbells. He went on a small tangent about all the aunties and uncles and siblings he had there, and he started to gush about them just like he did about his brother back home. 

 

He’s just finished a story about how Auntie Anna and Auntie Amanda helped him make dinner once-- only for Amanda to realize that while this definitely wasn’t pork, it sure was long pig-- and was about to jump into the topic of his  _ new _ little siblings when I steered him back on course.

 

“Bubba, focus, okay? You said you needed to protect your family from us.”

 

He snapped his fingers, suddenly remembering his own train of thought. “ _ Yeah! Yeah. _ ” A moment ago he’d been happy as a clam doing coke in the Pizza What parking lot, but almost instantly his mood darkened again. “ _ If I don’t take care of you, you’ll hurt my family _ .”

 

It took a lot-- A. Lot.-- for me to not laugh at that. Oh yeah, like I was a real threat to any of them. Put me in for twelve rounds with Uncle Evan and I’d be lucky if I landed a purple nurple on the guy. The only ones of us who wouldn’t get our shit kicked in a fight with any of the Tall, Dark and Uglies were David, Jake, Meg and that Tapp guy. The rest of us had spent our lives being human punching bags or hiding in bathroom stalls to  _ avoid _ being human punching bags.

 

(Or maybe that was just me and I was projecting.)

 

Still, as ridiculous as I thought that fear was, it wouldn’t be good to just dismiss it. “What makes you think we’ll do that?”

 

“ _ Outsiders is always the same. You don’t understand us so you wanna hurt us. It was like that at home and it’s the same here… _ ”

 

I leaned into him and rested my head on his shoulder; he squeezed my hand again. “Did a lot of people try to hurt you back home?”

 

“ _ Mhmm. Lots of strangers came by, trespassin’ and scarin’ me. _ ” He tugged off his apron, tossing it aside. He unbuckled his belt then and unbuttoned his pants. I got really confused really fast, and if it wasn’t for the serious mood my heart might have jumped out of my chest. I was gonna say something, but thankfully I didn’t, because I would have been hella-fucking-embarrassed when he simply lifted his shirt to show off his belly.

 

His body was stupid hairy, just like his arms. I rubbed his middle; the hairs that coated him were surprisingly soft and nice to the touch. He squirmed as I pet him, and he laughed, swatting my hand away. He turned his body, pointing to a really nasty-looking scar on his side. I sucked in air through my teeth as he traced the edges of it and poked at it.

 

“ _ One of ‘em did this to me ‘bout a year ago. _ ” He frowned. “ _ It was a scary-looking man, like the one you hang around with. _ ”

 

Any number of the guys could be described as “scary-looking” in my opinion. Especially Bill. Especially Bill when he got pissed. 

 

“Did he stab you?”

 

“ _ Nuh-uh, but he tried to. Cut me real deep. I was scared my guts were gonna come out. _ ”

 

I wanted to touch it too, to feel how rough the skin was, but he quickly turned again, showing off his wide back. It was criss-crossed with all sorts of scars, from long knife marks to punctures to what even seemed like bullet wounds. Looking at them all made me feel so protective of him. Yeah, sure, he’d probably earned all of those while dragging some poor bastard behind the shed to slaughter, and sure he probably deserved all of them, but just the thought of him getting hurt made me queasy. For just a split second, before the answer hit me like a cartoon piano, I wondered why anyone would wanna hurt him, even in self-defense.

 

“I get why you might be scared,” I said after I managed to stop nervously chewing my nails. “But you have to understand, Bubba, my friends and I don’t want to hurt you like those people do. None of us would ever--”

 

I was going to say “None of us would ever stab you!” but then I remembered that Laurie was fond of carrying around sharp piece of glass, specifically for stabbing killers. I could have said that none of us  _ enjoyed _ hurting him but I don’t feel like that would been true either. Feng Min was especially fond of dropping palettes on whoever was chasing her. I knew Bubba in particular had been on the receiving end of her stunning-and-crude-gesture routine at least a few times.

 

I took a minute to consider my words. “None of us would ever… hurt you if we didn’t feel we had to.” What a shitty cover-up. I would bet none of the people his family had eaten had gone to the farm looking for a fight, either; any kind of struggle they’d put up had probably also been in self-defense. “We do it because we want to live. I mean, my man, it hurts like hell to get sacrificed! And I don’t just mean when you hit me with your hammer or when you put me on a hook, either. It hurts the whole time going up, and when we’re being-- I dunno, digested? And right up until I’m back at camp. We don’t wanna go through all that. You understand, don’t you?”

 

His rested his chin in his hands, and he screwed his eyes up tight. “ _ I wouldn’t have t’ hurt you if you’d just go away. _ ” He sounded miserable; I wondered if this was the first time he’d considered what actually happened to us when we got caught. I also wondered if this was the first time he’d put any real thought into what happened to his victims.

 

“Bubba, we can’t leave. Believe me, we’d all fucking love to get out of here, but we can’t! We tried everything we can think of. There’s no way out.”

 

He hid his face in his hands. His breathing got a little heavier but he didn’t cry. I draped one arm around his back and hooked the other under him, pulling him into this awkward mostly-hug. I felt so bad telling him this shit; I mean, it really seemed to rock his foundation, if his sudden total silence and the shaking of his body meant anything. I probably-- scratch that,  _ definitely _ \-- shouldn’t have felt bad, since, I mean, how was he supposed to grow as a person and stop being a redneck murder-cannibal if no one told him? 

 

I patted his back. “It’s not your fault, big guy, and I’m not blaming you. I know you’re just trying to be good and help your family. But maybe we could compromise, okay? Maybe you could help me out too and be a little bit nicer to us? ‘Cuz my friends are my family too.” 

 

I tried to sound as soft as possible when I spoke. At the time, I almost couldn’t believe that I could be as gentle as I was with him. Since I was so macho and masculine the soft thing really didn’t suit me, but every time we were together I broke away from being the pinnacle of masculinity. I didn’t want to be sarcastic and aggressive to him, I just wanted to be whatever he needed me to.

 

(Of course, this wasn’t something I consciously realized until way later, when he and I were going steady and every moment I spent with him melted my stupid bisexual heart. )

 

I really think he appreciated it. I think, maybe, if someone less understanding had pointed out this simple stuff to him he might have taken it way, way worse.

 

That being said, however… He still took it pretty bad.

 

“ _ I was being nice! _ ” he shouted. “ _ I left ‘em alone, didn’t I? I tried to leave you alone too but you didn’t listen! _ ”

 

“Bubba, you didn’t say anyt-”

 

“ _ I couldn’t! _ ” He grabbed his throat. “ _ I can’t talk when we’re out there! It hurts! I pointed so you knew to run, but you didn’t, and I got scared! _ ”

 

“Wait, what do you mean it hurts?” I asked, which was pretty stupid. The whole can’t-talk thing made perfect sense; it’s why all the killers just squealed or groaned (or grunted like Chunky Kong). It was the reason I’d be startled when Bubba talked to me in the first place.

 

And of course they couldn’t talk! Talking meant negotiations! It meant we could be friends and bond and shit! And if we were friends the Entity would never get fed, which is a big no-no if you’re a giant stupid spider-bitch. 

 

While I wouldn’t realize how much I loved Bubba for a while, something did dawn on me about our relationship. I’d thought the Entity controlled and watched everything that happened in the realm, but maybe that wasn’t true. There’s no way Bubba and I were supposed to meet outside of trials, right? There was no way he should have been able to talk with me and there’s no way we should have become friendly-- but here we were. So that had to mean one of two things: One, the spider-bitch wasn’t all-powerful (Good!); or, Two, we were being manipulated (Bad!). 

 

The thought that maybe there were holes in the Entity’s powers was exciting! That meant there was a chance for all of us to escape! I mean, like I mentioned earlier, being kidnapped was the best thing to happen to me-- but I’m pretty sure I was the only one who felt that way, so I was pumped at the idea of my friends going back home.

 

On the flip side, however, if the Entity was manipulating the both of us… that was terrifying. The gang and I had been tossing around the idea that maybe the Entity fed on emotions. Jake had argued that that would explain why it seemed to grow even stronger when we fought or got too upset. If that were true, then maybe pushing killers and survivors together like that would have been some sort of magical honeypot for the damn thing. Either that, or it was another way to send survivors to wherever we went when we lost all hope.

 

I didn’t have any real kind of evidence for any of those claims, so I put those thoughts on the backburner and tried to come back to the now. All the while I’d been daydreaming, Bubba had kept talking and getting more upset the more I ignored him. 

 

“I’m sorry, buddy. You said it hurts to talk in the trials-- because of the Entity, right?”

 

He looked up into the sky, but quickly winced and looked back down. So looking up at it hurt them too? “ _ I guess so. _ ”

 

“And what were you saying after that?”

 

“ _ I was tellin’ you that it hurts when I don’t do a good job, too. If I don’t send you up or put you on lots of hooks, it hurts me. _ ” He chewed on his fingers. “ _ Last time was th’worst. _ ”

 

“Why’s it do that?”

 

“ _ I dunno! _ ”

 

I wanna say it’d be weird for the Entity to use negative reinforcement-- especially on someone like Bubba, who I’d bet would have thrived on praise-- but was it really though? The Entity was a big sadistic animal with zero empathy.  All it knew how to do was inflict pain and cause suffering. (Imagine Freddy but not a manlet. And with even less brain cells, somehow.)

 

That explained a lot of the ruthlessness Bubba tended to have in the trials. Between his love for his new family and his fear of the Entity, it wasn’t any real wonder why he never showed any mercy. Even the bear trap guy and Meltman had the occasional bout of pity and would sometimes drop one of us off by a hatch. But Bubba? If you so much as breathed in his general direction you were as good as dead.

 

While I was learning to stop being afraid of him, and I’d certainly stopped hating him for his behavior,  I still wasn’t happy about it. But that was okay, who would be happy about being brutally murdered? Other than weirdos, I mean. The kind who thought, like, the Shape was hot. I didn’t enjoy but I understood. I understood a lot now, actually.

 

Honestly, the whole talk had been amazing and constructive. (Imagine how bad off we would have been if I’d been angry and yelled at him! All the manager bullshit had sucked back home but here? It kept saving my life.) I couldn’t wait to go back to camp and tell the others what I knew! Minus what I’d have to omit, of course, like how I knew. And what the fuck we could even do with this information. The other downside to that is that they’d probably have a ton of questions for me, since I’d seem to suddenly be a well of knowledge. Well, sorry guys, I didn’t know jack or shit, so I’d hoped you’d forgive me.

 

“We’re… gonna have to find a way to compromise. We need to find a way we can both win.” I looked up at him. “Maybe you could just hook us a few times, but not enough that we go up. Do you think that’d work?”

 

“ _ I don’t know… _ ” 

 

We rubbed our chins.

 

“Would you feel comfortable trying?” I asked.

 

He didn’t look sure.

 

“I won’t push you. We can try to think up something else if you want, it’ll just take time.”

 

He hesitated, but asked, “ _ If this works, you won’t hurt us, will you? Me ‘n’ my family? _ ”

 

“I don’t wanna, and I-- we-- won’t if we don’t have to.” His back tensed slightly. “But hey! If it works for you, it’ll work for the others. And if it works for them, both parties can figure something out, right? Then nobody would have to hurt anybody. That sounds good, doesn’t it?”

 

His face lit up. He fucking beamed like a ray of sunshine. (Though by that point I could barely remember what the sun looked like.) God, he was such a fucking cutie. I’m surprised that his face hadn’t killed me as much as his chainsaw had. 

 

I felt like my heart was gonna burst. Say what you want, but I wanted the plan to work out moreso for Bubba’s benefit than for half of the people I interacted with at camp every day. Maybe that made me a dick, but all of them-- save for a sensitive handful-- had become desensitized to the constant murder-escape-terror cycle by now. I was sure they’d all appreciate a smaller deathcount, but even if the plan didn’t work, they wouldn’t be more traumatized than they already were, right? 

 

So, Bubba and me, we put together this shoddy little plan: Two hooks a person, that was the limit. We figured that if he didn’t hook everyone twice, or at all, it might look more convincing. In-between rounds of hooks, he’d “lose” us, doing his best to act like he was looking for us everywhere.  He said he’d do his best to avoid hurting anyone, and I would do my best to show everyone it was “safe” without letting on that Bubba and I were in this together. I knew if it didn’t work, and word about us got out, we’d both probably be burned at the stake.

 

And it worked! I was so excited when people came back from trials with him and bragged about getting away. Seeing their confidence and their happiness made me proud. The impact it had on Bubba was noticeable too. He seemed happier whenever I saw him, even when we were meeting in the field. There was a change in body language in him-- he was obviously less worried, less scared. I don’t know if it was because he knew I was proud of him, or if it was because he was genuinely happy to stop hurting my friends. Violence seemed like it was kind of embedded in him, what with his whole family having pushed all that fucked-up shit on him probably since birth, but maybe he was unlearning it. It seemed that way at least.

 

Until the plan stopped working. Until he ran to meet me, shaking and hysterical, beneath the tree in our special spot. Before he even reached me I saw that his arms had both been fucked up. They looked like two shanks of meat that had been found by a dozen starving alley cats, and I nearly threw up all over his apron when he grabbed me in his arms.

 

“What happened?” I barely managed to get the words out; I was too focused on his skin and his sobbing.

 

“ _ It knows! _ ” he said. It felt more like he squeezed it out, like he had to force the noise out of himself. “ _ It knows, it knows, it knows! _ ”

 

“What? Bubba, who knows? Did the Entity find out?”

 

He nodded furiously, backing away and shoving his arms out. I couldn’t look at them for more than a few seconds, but when I looked away I realized it was my fault, which felt even worse.

 

“ _ It found out, a-an’-- and Uncle Evan, he… he… _ ” The tears were pouring out now; I could see his cheeks begin to shine beneath the mask. “ _ He told me I had to be punished. ‘Said he was disappointed in me and that I had to learn. _ ”

 

I took his hands, careful not to brush any of the raw skin above his wrists. “So that fucker did this to you?”

 

“ _ Don’t call him that! It’s my fault! I deserved it. _ ”

 

“You didn’t deserve that. And it’s not your fault.” I ran my thumbs over his bruised knuckles. They were slightly misshapen and felt weirdly nice. “It was mine. The idea was mine, remember? I pushed you into it when I shouldn’t have.”

 

He murmured that it was  _ our _ plan but he didn’t push the subject, and neither did I. I just kept glancing up at his face, which had been so bright and adorable a few days(?) ago but now looked so damn tired. It made me wish we could sleep, so I could lay his head in my lap and rub it while he dreamed. 

 

My eyes trailed down to his arms, still as raw and gross as they had been four minutes ago, despite my hopes. I tried not to stare, but I wanted to imprint the sight of them onto my brain. I wanted to be able to see them when I shut my eyes for too long, so I’d always remember what happened when I brought other people-- especially him-- into shitty schemes.

 

Like I said, they were… meaty, which I mean, duh, they were arms, but still. They were awful. The parts that didn’t look like yesterday’s gyro meat looked like spit-up hamburger-- the kind that’s stuffed with chunks of cheese and peppers and black beans and dubbed “southwestern style”. The parts that didn’t look like the main course from a shitty suburban “barbecue” were dotted with sores, both filled with pus and open. (If the scratch marks meant anything, he’d opened them himself.)  You could smell the open wounds, and just decay in general. I couldn’t even imagine how much it must have hurt, both in that moment and when it was happening.

 

I didn’t know what Dear Uncle Evan had done to make them look like this, but I knew that the next time I saw that fucker I was gonna give him hell. I didn’t care if it got me killed, I was gonna borrow Laurie’s big-ass shard of Killer-Stabbing Glass and I was going to ram it so far up his ass that he’d beg God for a prolapse. Maybe I couldn’t last twelve rounds, but give me twelve seconds with that fucker and he would pay for even daring to lay a hand on this man.

 

I heard Bubba yelp and it pulled me out of my thoughts. Without realizing it, I’d grabbed his arm. I pulled it away lightning fast and he clutched it. He was trying to dull the pain, but judging by the way he flung his hand away, I’d say he only made it worse.

 

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to.”

 

I opened my arms and he didn’t hesitate to rush into them. He pressed his face against my neck, looking for that familiar comfort. I couldn’t deny him anything; I pet his hair.

 

“We won’t do it again,” I muttered to him. “We’ll go back to how it was before. We have to.”

 

“ _ I don’t wanna hurt you. I liked it better when I wasn’t hurting you. _ ”

 

“I liked it better too, buddy, but that’s how it’s gonna have to be for now.”

 

He peeked up at me, looking up just enough so I could see his eyes. They were big and black and shining. He wasn’t judging me, I don’t think, but I felt judged. I felt like I had stupidly applied for Mr. Universe and was being evaluated, all the while waiting for the other shoe to drop and the judges to burst out laughing. Worse yet, I felt like I failed him.

 

I couldn’t ask him to forgive me-- the words simply wouldn’t come out. Even if they had, they wouldn’t have felt like enough. Saying them would have been such a cheap cop-out; something that would have put the ball in  _ his _ court and made the future of our friendship  _ his  _ job.

 

I needed him to know how I felt, outside of words and other things that were as empty as Jake and David’s heads. So I kissed him. Maybe it was too forward for me to do that, but it was just a quick peck on the forehead. And then a slightly less quick one on his cheek when he stood up. And then a long, long one on his mouth when he seized my lips.

 

(“Seized my lips”. Like this is a dollar store romance or something.)

 

Like always, I was as delicate as I could be with him. He was hurting, and as much as my body was heating up from kissing him, I didn’t want to add to the pain. It was kind of awkward to kiss Bubba-- not because his raw-pork arms meant he couldn’t really hold me, or any of the other reasons it might be awkward to kiss someone who had repeatedly murdered you, but because of the.. God, what were they? Elastic? Strings that kept the mouth of his mask from fucking up. Every time he pushed a little hard or one of us turned our head, those strings dug into me and twisted against my skin. They didn’t hurt or even pinch, but they were super noticeable and they almost pulled me out of the moment.

 

When we pulled our tongues out of each other’s throats we just stood there for a minute, both of us shocked. I didn’t think that I’d have had the balls to do it.

 

He didn’t speak, so when I could find the words, I asked, “...How’s your arm?”

 

“ _...Fine. _ ”

 

“I didn’t bump it, did I?”

 

“ _ No. _ ”

 

“Good, good, I’m glad.”

 

His face, which was still slightly red and puffy from crying, grew serious. I flinched.

 

“ _ Dwight. _ ” I couldn’t remember him ever saying my name before then. 

 

“Yeah?” I asked, teeth clenched and prepared for impact.

 

“ _ Are we married now? _ ”

 

My muscles relaxed so fast you’d swear I deflated. “...What?”

 

“ _ Are we married now? _ ” he repeated.

 

“No, Bubba, we’re not-- we’re not married.”

 

“ _ Even though we kissed? _ ”

 

“Even though we kissed.”

 

“ _ But you were kissing me in a marrying kind of way, weren’t’cha? Not like Mama used to kiss me. Not like how my brother used to, neither. _ ”

 

That was  _ not _ how I’d put it, but I guess he wasn’t wrong. I’d been feeling warm and fuzzy about him for months now, and if I was in a “marrying” state of mind with him… well, I guess that would have explained it. 

 

(Along with why I’d been beating off to the thought of him a lot. I’d thought it was because I’d made this mental connection with him and my Kickass Action Woman, but I guess I was just in love.)

 

“I mean, yeah.”

 

“ _ But we’re not married… _ ”

 

“No, Bubba, I can’t marry you yet.”

 

Then I got an idea. It was a stupid, stupid idea. I mean like, “Giving Nuclear Codes to George Bush (both of them)” kinds of stupid. I’m talking “Selling your Indie Game Studio to EA” levels of stupidity. “Crossing the street in Chicago without looking” stupid. “Putting your dick a bear trap” stupid. “Eating gas station sushi” stupid. Eating gas station food in general stupid. 

 

I said to him, “But someday, I think I’d like to.”

 

He didn’t object, he didn’t even seem shocked. He simply stated, “ _ We’re both boys, aren’t we? We can’t get married. _ ” (Hadn’t he thought about that before he brought up marriage in the first place? I guess not.)

 

The phrasing was weird, but I’ll be damned if I said I was thinking about anything other than how much I wanted the raw-armed, red-faced murder-man in front of me. “We can where I live.”

 

“ _ Really? _ ”

 

“Mhmm. Would you wanna?”

 

He thought about it for a long time. If I had been proposing (though I use that term loosely) to anyone else, I think I would have been a nervous wreck. My heart would have jumped out of my throat and kicked me in the dick, with my brain standing by with a baseball bat, waiting for its turn to have a go. But I felt fine, I was composed. I knew that even if he said no, we’d still be friends. I wouldn’t lose him.

 

After all his contemplating, he simply asked, “ _...What about my family? _ ”

 

“Which family? The one here or the one back home?”

 

“ _ Back home. _ ”

 

“What about them?”

 

“ _ When folks get married, they move out on their own, don’t they? One of my brothers did that and he done never came back. We won’t leave, will we? _ ”

 

We would. Oh fuck, we would. I’d pack up his shit and then we’d book it out of Texas as fast as we could and we’d never look back. I didn’t want him with his family anymore-- I wanted him to be in the city with me, with people and with doctors that could help him. I wanted to protect him and make sure he was healthy. I sure as hell couldn’t do that in Shithole, TX 96669. I also had the strangest feeling his family wouldn’t have been too happy to let me take care of him, regardless of whether we stayed or went. “No, we won’t leave.”

 

“ _ Promise? _ ”

 

“I Promise.”

 

He thought about it some more. The waiting game sucked but I was glad it seemed to take his mind off of the pain. When his brows knit up and he looked ready to cry again, I stopped him. “You don’t have to give me an answer now,” I told him. “You can wait. We have all the time in the world and I don’t want you to make a decision you’ll regret.”

 

“ _ Do ya love me? _ ” he asked.

 

“I think I might love you.”

 

“ _ You don’t know for sure? _ ”

 

“Admittedly, no. Do you love me?”

 

“ _ I think so… _ ” He played with his curls. I wanted to run my fingers through his hair, even if it wasn’t really “his”. “ _ But I don’t know for sure either. _ ”

 

“Then, hmm…” I rubbed my arm and shrugged. “Do you wanna find out for sure?”

 

He slowly tilted his head to the side, in the way killers loved to do. “ _ I reckon I would. _ ”

 

\--

 

A lot happened to us after that. Hell, a lot happened to us even before that. But this flashback wankfest has gone on long enough, and if I don’t skip to the good stuff I think I’ll lose my mind.

 

A lot of time passed (I think?). He and I kept getting closer and closer. It eventually got to the point where I was almost never at camp. Everyone-- with the exception of Jake-- started to fuss and fret over me, wondering where I was, what I was doing, so on and so forth. I think some of them had really started to catch on to what was going on. I had honestly begun to worry about what was going to happen to me. To Bubba. To us. I imagined what might happen to us if we were separated after everything we’d been through.

 

I didn’t have to imagine that hard, because one day we escaped.

 

Just like that, the Entity spat us out.

 

And now? Now I’m here in Texas. Travis county, just south of Childress.

 

I’ve come home.


	2. Quincy and Thomas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The chapter where Dwight goes to Texas.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is for everyone who put up with me moaning and groaning about not wanting to edit it. I finally did it, bitchesss!

All right, all right, maybe I should rewind a  _ little _ . First of all, you’re probably wondering how the hell we escaped the Entity’s realm. Well… I have no damn clue. One moment we were there and then  _ bam!  _ we were gone. I was out of the woods and into the woods. The woods I got lost in, not the murder woods. I followed the path out to the parking lot and would you fucking believe it, my car was still there, in pristine condition. (Minus all the junk food wrappers on the passenger side floor, of course. And the grimy windows. And the headlight that was going out. Okay so it wasn’t pristine, but it was exactly how I remembered it.)

 

After nearly having a fucking heart attack, I dug my phone out of my pocket and checked the date: June 14th, 2016.

 

The day I left.

 

Despite all the months (years?) I’d spent in the Entity’s realm, not a single day had passed by here. It was as if nothing had even happened. I probably cycled through all five stages of grief about ten times that day, and a hundred more that first week home. I was so wigged out and shaky that, well, let’s just say the handrail in my apartment building’s stairway saved my stupid neck more than a few times.

 

Once the shock had cleared away though, I realized that I couldn’t just go back to how life had been before. I had a boyfriend now! (A fiancé?) A boyfriend I desperately needed to get back in contact with.

 

Like any respectable millennial, the first thing I did was Google him. Nothing. Googled his brothers-- nothing. I tried every kind of social media I could think of, typed in about a hundred different variations of his name, and came up with abso-fucking-lutely nothing. I didn’t panic; it was weird, but not  _ that _ weird. I knew his family was a bunch of shitheads, so there was no way he’d have any real contact with the outside world. They lived out in the boonies anyway, so they probably didn’t even have Internet, or color television.

 

I tried to remember what he’d told me about his home-- two-story farmhouse, close enough to the highway for convenience (and fresh meat), but tucked away enough for privacy.  He said his brother mentioned Childress and Neut quite a lot, and was always going to one of them for supplies. I wrote it down so I wouldn’t forget, then did some more digging.

 

Oddly enough, while Childress was still very real, Neut hadn’t been on any maps since the ‘80s, and hadn’t reported any kind of population since like, 1950. That weirded me out, but I brushed it off; Bubba had mentioned that his brother was much older than him, so it was likely the dude was senile. 

 

I called into the Travis County Sheriff’s Department, who redirected me to the county courthouse, who redirected me to the circuit clerk, who redirected me to the records department. After about two hours of phone tag, I asked a tired-sounding secretary if there were any records on a Sawyer family.

 

She sighed and I heard her type something out. “Sir,” she muttered, “There’s about  _ five-ten-twenty-thirty-one-two-th-- _ thirty-three different Sawyer families  _ on record _ in Travis county, none of which I can give you information about without a release form.”

 

“So you can’t help me at all?”

 

“Not over the phone, sir. If you want to come down to the office and speak to someone who can, our business hours a-”

 

“I live in fucking Chicago! I can’t come down to your stupid fucking office!” 

 

And then I hung up on her.

 

I was tempted to call back and apologize for being an ass, but I was already super drained, and the idea of talking to her again embarrassed me so much I wanted to die.

 

I sat back in my chair and I groaned. I understood why she couldn’t give that information to some rando over the phone, but good God did I really have to be  _ there _ for any kind of service? What was I supposed to do, just haul my ass down to Texas?

 

Oh. That was a great idea actually-- why  _ not _ just haul my ass down to Texas? I could fly down there, find Bubba myself, pick him up and get the hell out of there before the farmers even knew the fox had been in the hen house!

 

I’d jumped to my feet, pacing and giggling and chewing on my nails. Duh! It had been so simple! The answer was right in front of me the whole time! 

 

So I made my resolve then. The only real problem was, like always, money. I’d need money to fly down there, money for a motel, money for food, money to rent a car. And after I’d actually found Bubba I’d need money to get him back home, money to take him to a doctor, money to sort out his paperwork.

 

What if he didn’t have any paperwork? I doubted that he drove so he probably didn’t have a license. Did he have a social security card, or even a birth certificate? If you’re trying to keep your family’s murdering a secret you’d probably want to keep your paper trail to a minimum, right? But his brother owned a business, I think? You couldn’t have a business without paperwork, it just didn’t happen. Forgery was an option. If Bubba had any papers they were probably forged too.

 

I bit my lip. Forged papers were better than none, though. Once I brought him home and got him settled he’d have legit ones.

 

Christ, if he didn’t have any kind of ID, he couldn’t get on a plane. When I thought about it, I realized that was probably for the best. To even think about getting past security he’d have to ditch his mask, and I can’t even imagine how much that’d freak him out. I didn’t want to subject him to all the stares and the whispers and the snide remarks from the government pawns of the TSA.

 

The mask was a whole new issue. He couldn’t wear it in daily life-- it was simply impossible. Even without it being literal human skin, it was just too weird. How would he be able to get a job looking like that? Scratch that, how would he be able to get a job looking like he did  _ under _ the mask?  _ I _ knew he was handsome but I also knew most people would disagree.

 

My thoughts kept spiraling downward. Could he hold down a job, period? What if he couldn’t? How was I supposed to take care of him on my own? Would he be able to get disability? If he did, we wouldn’t be able to get married anymore.

 

I was face down on my bed by this point, screaming into my pillow. Why did absolutely everything have to be complicated for no reason? Why couldn’t the system be smoother, with less bumps? Yeah sure, a few bad seeds might slip through the cracks-- a cannibalistic Texan, for example-- but wouldn’t it be worth it for the improved daily lives of bureaucrats everywhere?

 

(Besides, he wouldn’t be eating any people while he lived with me!)

 

I let myself pout about it for a while, cry a little bit, ya know? Express my feelings in  _ healthy _ ways. Then I screamed my lungs out and ate junk food until I collapsed.

 

\--

 

I decided to stick to the good old-fashioned philosophy of “I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it”. There wasn’t any use in worrying about things I couldn’t change, right? (I mean, thinking that way hadn’t helped my anxiety much in the past twenty-seven years but maybe it would have then! How would I have known?)

 

I focused on what I  _ could _ change. I went to my boss and asked for a promotion. When he laughed at me, I quit my shitty job and started a new, slightly less shitty job. I put my nose to the grindstone and I worked. Late nights, unpaid overtime, missing sleep and lunch breaks to finish reports-- anything I could do to get ahead, I did it. It took me six months at the new place before I got that promotion, and it took another three months to earn the vacation time I’d need to get my boyfriend.

 

In the meantime I scraped together every penny I could. After bills and groceries I was always left with next to nothing. I scraped more, and I tightened my belt. Fast food no more than once a week, no going to bars, no beer or alcohol at all. No new games, no microtransactions, no more than one movie a month. I canceled my movie streaming, my music streaming, my anime streaming, my TV streaming, and even my cable-- basically everything, until all I had left were 360p YouTube uploads of  _ Kitchen Nightmares _ .

 

It sucked. It all sucked. I hated having to wake up at the asscrack of dawn to pack my own lunch, commute to a job I could barely tolerate, work my ass off for the barest amount of gratitude, then come home and spend the night with nothing trashy to turn my brain off to. There were plenty of times where I’d simply skipped dinner (usually some unholy combination of canned peas, ramen, nearly-expired eggs and bread) and went straight to bed.

 

I’d gather up all my pillows in my arms and I’d clutch them to my body, squeezing them and kissing them and pretending they were my boyfriend. Aside from general fluffiness, they were a pretty shitty substitute for Bubba, but it was good enough. I was able to imagine how good it would feel to squeeze  _ him _ and kiss  _ him _ and how much all this bullshit would be worth it in the end. Being able to wake up to someone you loved that much would be way better than reality TV or third-rate burgers.

 

And while I toiled away for all those months, I got back in contact with a lot of my friends. Meg and Claudette were easy enough to get ahold of, and so was Jeff, though he seemed older than I remembered. I found Feng Min’s Twitch, but when I tried to send her a private message, she said she didn’t know me. (She also blocked me, the little shit.)

 

It sucked. And she wasn’t the only one, either. David and Nea had also said that we’d never met before. I mean, I know I’d had my spats with all of them-- those last few weeks had gotten especially tense-- but I didn’t think our relationships had been  _ that _ bad. I asked Claudette,  who was always in everyone’s good graces, if she could try and contact them too, but when she did, they had told her the same thing they’d told me. She concluded that they were probably trying to forget the whole thing and move on. Not that I could blame them, but did they have to move on from their friends, too?

 

At the end of my search it had basically boiled down to the four of us, plus Adam and Kate. (Kate also looked older than I remembered, but I’d always thought she was lying about her age anyway, so it didn’t bother me that much.) Everyone else had either “forgotten” us or didn’t have any contact information that we could find.

 

It had been so weird when I migrated the little Facebook group I’d put us in to Skype. Hearing all their voices for the first time in forever made me super emotional. It didn’t help that everyone was just  _ okay _ , you know? We laughed together and talked about all the exciting shit in our lives-- Claudette’s scholarships, Jeff’s husband, Adam’s classes-- and even though we had quiet conversations about the lasting effects of our time in the Entity’s Realm, we were mostly all right. We had survived and we were surviving still, and that usually left me fucked up. 

 

It was so good to talk to them again. Hell, it was so good to NOT talk to them-- to just, like, sit in a call together quietly while Adam graded papers or Kate strummed her guitar. Nights like that felt so special, like we were all on the same wavelength. We’d spent so many exhausted, quiet nights together that there was comfort in returning to that.

 

I wondered if I would be able to fit my boyfriend into nights like that. I could picture him humming along to the music, putting his arms around me and swaying us together. 

 

Maybe I could introduce him gradually. The first time they’d hear him in the background, I’d just drop in a “Oh, that’s my boyfriend.” Real casual. I’d let him listen in, let the others get a feel for him. They’d start to like having him around, and when he was asleep or out they’d teasingly ask me where my man was. Then, when I was sure they wouldn’t be too mad, I’d introduce him formally. “Hey, so, my boyfriend used to kill us and stuff. You remember the leatherface guy? Yeah, that’s him.”

 

Sure, yeah, I know it’d be awkward, but I’d tell them how cool he’s been since we moved in together and I’m sure they’d get over it. I did, so how hard could it be, really? And then we’d all keep being friends and we’d sort out our trauma and we’d all live happily ever after. It was gonna be great!

 

My trip to Texas couldn’t have come fast enough.

 

\--

 

I ended up taking the fifteen hour drive to Childress instead of flying. I’d never really taken a roadtrip before and I’d thought this was as good a time as any to try to see the country from the road.

 

That was my excuse to my boss, anyway. My unwillingness to fly had less to do with how much I wanted to stare blankly at the highway and more to do with the .45 under my passenger seat.

 

It was heavy, and it felt wrong in my hands, and I didn’t especially want it, but I knew that if I was going to the Sawyer family house I was going to need it. The best-case scenario would be that everyone else was out, and I could run in, grab Bubba and fly out of there like a bat out of hell; more likely than not though, this wasn’t gonna be the case. I needed to be prepared.

 

\--

 

The trip was boring. The highways were boring; the radio was boring. The sun in my eyes, the heat, and countless hours in my own thoughts were boring. Everything on that drive had just made me frustrated and impatient. It seemed like every time I drove a mile, two more would be added to the route; like the heat was melting my brain and making it play tricks on me.

 

Arriving in Childress was boring. Asking around town was boring. Checking the backroads was boring. Slamming my head over and over against the steering wheel was boring. It took two fruitless days of tireless searching before I had anything resembling a solid lead, and every moment of those days had been boring.

 

It wasn’t until I made some offhand comment to an older lady that I got any real help. She was a really sweet old gal and she told me about this gas station that used to be run by a, in her words, “handsome older gentleman” who also lived nearby. It was tough to be courteous and not grill her for details after I’d spent the last three-ish days baking in the sun, but I managed it and she wrote down the directions for me.

 

The details I’d been given about the house were vague, but the directions and stories she told me lined up well enough. My heart started to race as I thanked her.

 

She told me not to get my hopes up-- that that business hadn’t been run by anyone since back in ‘74. I didn’t pay too much attention to that.

 

\--

 

I scoured the highway for any signs of it. I think I was expecting something semi-modern-- something with windows and air conditioning and indoor plumbing, like about half of the nicer gas stations in Chicago. Sure, there were a couple of those along the way, but all of them were too close to residences and other businesses. Way too conspicuous for man-eating and people-tanning.

 

It took me no less than two hours to realize the dinky little shack that I’d driven past half a dozen times-- the one that looked like it hadn’t even been pissed on since Clinton was president-- was a place I should stop by and not just something to let my short-term memory loss destroy.

 

I was angry, mostly at myself, by the time I finally decided to get out. I parked the rental car (which was new, so it was already way out of place in town that didn’t believe in car dealerships) behind the shop and went around front to bang on the door. I didn’t get anything of course, but it felt nice to bang my fist against something that didn’t have security cameras immediately nearby.

 

I leaned against the car, sighed. I dug the heels of my palms into my eyes.

 

“Don’t get mad,” I begged myself. “You didn’t come to fucking Travis County for gas, the gas station’s just a way point. A goddamn fucking way point.”

 

I dragged my hands down my face, sighed again and then looked around. There was highway, there was dirt, there was sand. About a mile away there was a break in it, in the form of rough green-brown grass haphazardly emerging from the earth. The farther away it got from where I was, the more there was, until the foliage gave way to trees.

 

I squinted hard, straining my already terrible eyesight. It was hard to make out, but I saw faintest shape of a dirt road.

 

I jumped back into the car and made a beeline for it, not really giving a shit about stupid things like “speed limits” and “seat belt safety”. This was the first break I’d gotten in hours and I would be lying if I said my mind wasn’t racing a hundred miles an hour.

 

(You should know I did kind of a Tokyo Drift thing when I turned onto the dirt path, and it was sick as fuck.) 

 

I had to actually slow down when I cut onto the dirt road because otherwise the jerking in the car would have made me bang my head so hard I’d have gone into a coma-- but I didn’t slow down much. I had a death grip on the steering wheel and my eyes were darting around frantically. I was looking for a house. It was a white house, two stories. It was probably plantation-style specifically, but I would be happy to find any house at all. 

 

And I did.

 

It wasn’t white and it wasn’t two stories. At least, it wasn’t anymore. At some point in its history it had been set on fire and all it was now was a sad, charred husk. There was half of a second floor remaining, but when I peeked inside, I saw that the rest had collapsed in on itself and sat squarely in the center of the ground floor.

 

I nearly sat down in the dirt and started crying. Sure, there wasn’t any clear indicator that this was the place I was looking for, but did my brain care? What do you think?

 

I rubbed my eyes and bit my lip, and as I tried to fight off the burning feeling in my throat all I could think about was what could have possibly happened.

 

Did someone find out? Secrets like that don’t stay secret forever, after all. Had the sleepy little town formed a lynch mob and marched up, torches and pitchforks, to kill the cannibal family living just outside their neighborhoods? Where was Bubba (and the rest of his family too I guess)? Had he escaped? Was he inside when the mob set the house on fire? Had he been trapped and burned to death? 

 

The inside of the wreckage was too unstable to look for bodies, but even if it wasn’t I doubt I would have been able to do it.

 

What if he’d rebelled against his family? What if - he didn't want to hurt people anymore, and he let one of the victims escape and they ran off and told everyone? What if that led to the fire? What if his family had punished him before it even got to that point? Had he still been alive when the fire broke out?

 

What if it all happened because of me?

 

Ah fuck, I really was crying by that point. I had my face buried in my hands and I felt my shoulders heaving. I let out a few heavy sobs and I was really letting my brain get the better of me. I was sure that, despite the lack of evidence, the man I loved was dead and I had been the cause.

 

I looked up from my hands, ready to choke out some sad little monologue about how sorry I was. My throat was tight and my breathe shook and I couldn’t see through my tears. I had to pause before I gave my romantic and sincere little speech, blinking out the tears and spitting out the phlegm that had collected in my throat.

 

I took the time to collect my breath. Dramatically, I whipped away from the house, ready to deliver my apology. I stared out.

 

On the horizon there was a house. White, two stories, but not plantation-style.

 

My tears and my snot and my thoughts dried up instantly. It was like I was in a commercial for allergy medicine.

 

Without even thinking I walked towards the house, my body being pulled in by that sexy little magnet called hope. I had to run through an overgrown field, traverse a small slope, cross what I assumed was a dried-up riverbed and then climb back up. As I went up the hill I looked back; I could still see the burnt house and the rental car with relative ease, and I was kind of mad at myself for not spotting this place sooner.

 

Whatever. It didn’t matter. All that mattered is that this place was white, had two stories, was near enough to the highway to get supplies and fresh meat and was still tucked far enough away to keep out prying eyes. It was in Travis county, just a stone’s throw away from Childress and the place that used to be called Neut. It was an old-looking house, one that had probably been in the family for a couple of generations.

 

I’d completely forgotten how sad I had been a few minutes ago. To say I was excited would be a monster of an understatement. I was so excited in fact, that I forgot to check if anyone was around before I darted headfirst onto the property. 

 

I also sort of forgot how my feet worked. I tripped and landed face-first into the dry, scratchy grass. My head rang and I was pretty sure I’d cracked my glasses, but for a moment I was so confused I couldn’t check.

 

I heard footsteps approaching briefly before they stopped in front of me. When I finally pulled my idiot brain back together enough to look up, I found myself staring into the barrel of a gun.

 

\--

 

And that’s where I find myself now. I’m laying on the ground, my glasses thankfully  _ not _ cracked, with a gun in my face. Behind the gun is some kid, but the glare of the sun makes it hard to get a clear look at his features. I squint up at him, my mouth hanging open.

 

“Who’re you?” he asks, and judging by the way he squeaks, I’d say he’s barely pubescent. 

 

“Huh?” 

 

“Why’re you here?” He’s got a thick-ass drawl, but at the same time he sounds like he’s trying to hide it.

 

“Huh?”

 

He sighs and pokes me with the gun. I flinch. “Get up,” he commands, and he sounds more annoyed than forceful.

 

I get my hands underneath myself, pushing myself up to my knees before shakily standing. I notice that the barrel follows my head as I move. I want to brush the dirt off of my clothes, but decide it’s better not to make any sudden movements.

 

“I’m gonna ask you this one more time,” the kid says. “Who are you and why are you trespassing on my land?”

 

Oh, it’s  _ his _ land, huh? Big words coming from a kid who probably doesn’t even have hair on his chest yet. I try to hide my contempt for the kid and mostly succeed. “My name is Dwight and I’m here to see… the Sawyers.”

 

I have to play it cool. I’ve got a feeling that if I let it slip that I’m looking for Bubba, I might not like the results I’m given. Maybe I can pass myself off as a… missionary or something. I bet if I told him I was in a “Multi-Level Marketing” program he’d eat it right up.

 

The kid shoves the barrel of the gun into my gut. I let out a winded “ _ Oof! _ ”, but it’s mostly out of reflex. The kid’s got no arm strength. “Well,” he says, his eyebrows tightening, “You found ‘em!”

 

He punctuates his statement by giving me a few more jabs in the stomach. I glare at him and he smirks back.

 

“Tommy?”

 

We both freeze. We hear the  _ eee  _ of a screen door opening and we both look to the door. Before the kid-- Tommy, I guess-- looks away, I see the confidence on his face melt away. That probably means that whoever’s calling for him is even scarier than the little shit is, but I’m too satisfied with seeing him get knocked down a peg to care.

 

I look up to the porch, where a man is standing, and my heart nearly falls out of my ass. He’s big, certainly over six feet. He’s thick too, with a round stomach hanging over his belt. He’s splattered with paint, his strong and hairy arms nearly coated with little flecks of white. Clutched in one hand is a brush.

 

His face, though-- his face is what kills me. It’s round and soft like the rest of him, with full cheeks that are rosy, most likely from the Texas sun. He’s got big brown eyes and a large nose that points up just slightly. His lips are thin and while his mouth is at rest you can make out the slightest overbite. His hair is a curly black mess, unkempt and slightly slick with the sweat of a hard day’s work.

 

Maybe it’s the fact that I hit my head, or it’s the long days I’ve spent out in the sun, but the sight of him makes my eyes burn. 

 

“Bubba?”

 

The man’s brows knit up at me. Louder this time, I ask, “Bubba? That’s you, right?”

 

He looks so confused, like I asked him why God made platypi. He keeps his eyes on me for a little bit longer than I would like, before he looks to the kid and harshly gestures for him to come over. With a scoff, the kid stomps over to him.

 

The man snatches the gun from the kid and I can see now that it’s only a BB gun. Unconsciously, I reach down and pat my pants, cursing to myself. Good! I forgot the fucking .45! Great! I spent five hundred dollars on the thing and I didn’t even have it when I was supposed to! The only good thing is that if these guys wanted to eat me, I’m pretty sure they’d have tried already.

 

The man sets the BB gun aside and sighs heavily. Then he rubs the sweat from his brow. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m not Bubba Sawyer.”

 

Yeah, I should have known that by the way he spoke. I shrug.

 

“I am a Sawyer, though.” He continues. “Quincy. This here is my boy, Tommy.”

 

“Thomas.” The kid hisses, like the little snake he is. “I told you to call me Thomas. I’m too old for baby names.”

 

Quincy frowns at his son, but nods. “Right, right.”

 

I sort of look between them, then up at the house, then back to them. So this guy isn’t Bubba, despite the fact that he looks a hell of a lot like him. I’m just about to ask myself why, when, duh!

 

“Yeah, I can tell you’re a Sawyer, uhh, heh!” I walk up to them, keeping my eyes peeled for anyone who might be creeping up on me. I hold my hand out for the guy and he takes it. His hand is huge and warm; my stupid knees buckle just a little when he shakes it. “Bubba told me he had a lot of brothers. He never mentioned a twin, though!”

 

Quincy’s overbite sticks out just a bit more as his frown deepens. “No, no, I’m not his… Bubba’s not my brother, no.”

 

“Oh.” A cousin, then, I guess. I had my suspicions about how close-knit this cannibal family really is but it seems like they’re a hell of a lot closer than I thought. “Well, that’s cool, umm…”

 

I rub the back of my neck. I’ve already shown that I know who the hell my boyfriend is, so there wasn’t gonna be any backpedaling on that, and these guys seem okay enough. I weigh my options, deciding on if it’s worth it to just go all-in. Ah, fuck it.

 

“Is he, umm home, by the way?” I point up to the house. “I don’t want to be rude or anything, but I’ve come all the way from-- from--” Lie! “From Milwaukee just to see him.”

 

Quincy eyes me. He spits. “What did you tell me your name was again?”

 

“I didn’t. It’s uhh, Dwight.”

 

“You got a last name, Dwight?”

 

“Fairfield.” Quincy, who has both the height and the porch advantage, began to lean over me as I spoke. He makes me squeak out, “It’s uhh, English. Or so I’m… told…”

 

“Well, Mister Fairfield, I’m afraid you can’t see him.”

 

“And why the hell not?” I don’t care how big or soft-looking this shitdick is, I’ve traveled hundred of miles over terrain worse than hell or high water to get here. I’ve been waiting for months to see my boyfriend, and even if the devil himself showed up and tried to stop me, I’d kill him and then piss on his grave! I’ll run like a bat out of hell to get that pistol from my car if I have to-- anything to clear these shit-for-brains out of my way! 

 

My eyes hurt from how wide I’m holding them open, and my jaw hurts from gritting my teeth. Quincy probably notices, since I’m not exactly being subtle about it. He rubs the bridge of his nose.  “Son, why don’t you come in? It’s too hot out here. We’ve got tea inside.”

 

“I don’t want your fucking tea! I came here for one reason, and one reason only: to see my bo-- m-my friend! I need to see him, don’t you get that?” Can’t he see I’m gonna fucking die if I don’t?

 

He doesn’t budge. He’s the parent of the brattiest teen I’ve ever met, so he’s probably used to outbursts and tantrums. This BB-toting little monster probably threatens to kill the family at least once a week. 

 

I want to grab Quincy and I want to shake him, or knock his teeth in, or rip out his hair. I want to pretend that I could drag him to the ground and put him in a sleeper hold until his chunky ass blacks out. Most of all I just want to push past him and burst into the house, shouting for my lover at the top of my lungs. I’d check the basement first-- the essential choice for a dungeon/holding cell. Then, if he wasn’t there, I’d race up to the attic. It’s more likely he’d be up there, since that was the go-to place for fucked-up families to keep their prisoner-relatives. Bubba would be my Rapunzel and I would be his prince! (Or, maybe more realistically, it’d be more like he was my Fiona and I was his Shrek.)

 

(Actually, Bubba’s way bulkier, whereas I’m slimmer, so maybe I’d be the Fiona between us? No, no, body-type doesn’t really matter with this kind of stuff, it’s all about personality! Bubba’s got a lot of spunk to him, but he’s also way moodier and grouchy than I am too, so he’s kind of in the middle? And I can’t forget the whole being-rescued thing! It’s important!)

 

(Actually, fucking none of this is important! Why am I spending mental energy on this? I bet I’m just gawking at Quincy like an idiot. He probably thinks my brain’s fried!)

 

(As opposed to what it actually is, which is full of holes and  _ leaking! _ )

 

I rub my face on the back of my arm, and I try and remember where my train of thought was before it ran off the rails. Right, right, I wanted to fuck this guy up and save my boyfriend.

 

Yeah, that’s… not going to happen. Quincy’s as big as one of those carved bear statues they have at really cool bars, and is probably just as heavy. If I had to guess, I’d say he could knock me over by sighing at me too hard.

 

This is really the end, isn’t it? I traveled a thousand miles, used up my vacation time, bought a gun instead of paying my bills, had about ten different breakdowns on the drive down, baked in the sun, shot my anxiety through the roof talking to strangers-- and after all that, after I found where I’m supposed to go, it’s just over? Just like that? 

 

I could run back to the car, grab that stupid, expensive hunk of metal and demand he let me in. This is Texas, so he probably has a gun of his own, but I would risk it. It’d be worth getting shot if I saw Bubba again.

 

I look back at the field, at my car. It’s all open. You can see everything from here. Even if I hid the .45 in my pocket I’d look suspicious long before they saw the bulge there. The rest of the family would run out and they’d pounce on me and I’d be pot roast before I even knew it. God knows I didn’t even know how to shoot the thing, really. I hadn’t even taken any lessons. I’d set myself up for failure again.

 

It takes all the training I’d gotten from years of therapy to not bang my head against the wooden poles on the porch. Not that it would matter, since everything has gone to shit anyway. Why am I even here? What was I hoping to prove? That I’m a big man who can be brave? That I can go in there, guns blazing, and protect someone I love for once in my stupid life?

 

My eyes burn. I know what’s coming. Quincy probably does too, and that’s why he’s looking at me like I’m some poor, abused circus animal. He rests his big, strong hands on my shoulders and begins rubbing circles into my skin. I guess it’s supposed to be a comforting thing, but he’s pushing down too hard, so it’s more distracting and frustrating than helpful.

 

“You look tired,” he whispers to me. His voice is so sweet that, even though I hate his fucking guts, I can’t help but cry. He’s right, I’m  _ so _ damn tired. I haven’t been this tired since I got back home. I want to lay in the dirt and dry out like the worm I am. Maybe if I pick a quiet spot away from the house Quincy would let me do that. He could make jerky out of me.

 

I laugh at the thought, but it comes out as this chokey/loogie-making sound that is absolutely awful on my ears. Quincy knits his brows. He looks like he wants to pull me in for a hug or something warmly paternal like that. I don’t want him to. I don’t want some look-alike.

 

While he decides what he wants to do to me (before he strings me up to bleed, probably) I look up to the house again, my eyes scanning the windows upstairs. They’re open, because for some reason they don’t have an A/C in this heat. Fat load of good it does them when there isn’t even a breeze. The curtains do stir, though.

 

Wait, wait,  _ wait _ . 

 

I blink out the tears and rub my eyes. I wipe the fog and grime off of my glasses. I stare back up, hoping to catch another glimpse of someone moving behind the curtains. Nothing. Maybe it  _ was  _ the wind?

 

Or maybe my boyfriend’s up there after all. Maybe he’s not chained in the attic or in a cage in the basement. Maybe he’s moving around, free as a bird, watching from everywhere I’m not looking. Maybe he knows I’m here. But then why isn’t he leaning out the window, shouting and flailing and nearly falling onto the roof? Why isn’t he running out here to see me, brother and nephew be damned? Why isn’t he out here to protect me from his psycho cannibal family?

 

The disaster thoughts start piling in. 

 

He’s been watching the whole time, avoiding-- what, me? Is he suddenly scared of me? Our relationship? Does he not want to get married anymore? I mean, that’s fine! I knew we rushed into that! I want to tell him we can go as slow as he wants to; I don’t care if we’re eighty by the time we get married, as long as we can be together. What if he doesn’t want that? What if he doesn’t want  _ me _ ?

 

That’s the fucking straw that breaks the camel’s back. I’m crying now, for real this time. I grip onto Quincy’s stupid plaid shirt and I bend over, resting my forehead on his chest. His hands hover above me; he probably doesn’t want to touch an absolute  _ freak _ who just bursts into tears for no reason. I don’t blame him; I bet his brother/cousin’s told him all about what an absolute nutcase I am. Cityslickers, am I right? They never get out, so their brains are mushy from being in the dark all the time. Even a bunch of cannibals are better put-together than I am.

 

He hugs me. I don’t want him to! Where’s my boyfriend? My fiancé! Why isn’t  _ he _ out here holding me? I need him so I can be strong! The only reason I’ve held on this long is because of him-- and he won’t even see me.

 

This really is the end.

 

The thought shuts me up. It feels so final that it kicks all the sad right out of my brain. I cough, I spit. Quincy rubs my back, hard and uncomfortable, just like he did with my shoulders. I wonder if he’s trying to tenderize me.

 

I almost want him to. I don’t really care anymore. If the family wants to stick me and chop me up and make barbeque and chili out of me, I don’t give a shit. I don’t have anything to go back to anyway, so why not get myself eaten? And hey, if he’s  _ eating my fucking brains _ , at least my boyfriend will actually pay me some attention. 

 

The bitterness of that makes me choke, but before I can start crying again, Quincy squeezes me, giving me some pats.  _ Shh, shh, shh _ , he whispers, like he’s comforting a fussy baby. That’s certainly what I feel like-- a huge, worthless, fussy baby.

 

He holds me until I relax in his arms. I swear he’s going to  _ do _ something then-- snap my neck, or break my ribs or whatever-- but he doesn’t. He simply lets me go, his hands hovering in front of him in case I start blubbering again. It takes a lot not to.

 

Finally, I find my voice again. “Can you at least-- Can you-- Can’t you tell him I said hello? And that I miss him?”  _ And that I wish he’d man up enough to come out and reject me himself? _

 

“Son…” Quincy says with a sigh. His tone nearly knocks me back on my ass. “I can’t.”

 

“Why not?”

 

“It’s just not possible, I’m afraid.”

 

“Quincy, please stop being so fucking  _ cryptic! _ You’re driving me  _ crazy. _ ”

 

He takes in a long breath and exhales it frustratingly slow. He puts his hands on my shoulders. I wonder if he can tell how exhausted I am, how scared and wound up. I wonder if he can look in my eyes and see how much I love Bubba. Maybe he can, and maybe he wants to save me from getting my heart broken further. Or, maybe he thinks I’m bad because I’m an outsider, and he just wants to protect his brother/cousin from the perils that would surely befall him if I stole him away. Maybe he thinks it’s the end of a legacy to send a Sawyer out into the world. Maybe he thinks we’ll go the media and recount endless tales of murder-cannibalism, and we’ll rat them all out to the police in exchange for Bubba’s immunity from prison. Maybe--

 

His eyes shine.

 

“I don’t know how you knew him, but if’n you were his friend, I don’t know how you don’t know.”

 

“Quincy.”

 

“And I hate to be the one who’s gotta tell you.”

 

“ _ Quincy. _ ”

 

“Son, I’m sorry, but he’s been dead since two-thousand-two.”


End file.
